By General Bell is once again advocating for three year accompanied tours in Korea:
The top U.S. military official in South Korea hopes to extend to three years tours by American troops to South Korea that will enable them to bring their families with them, a spokesman for the commander of the U.S. forces here said Thursday.
"Gen. B. B. Bell is a strong proponent of long term and permanent stationing of U.S. military forces in Korea," Col. Franklin Childress, the spokesman for the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), said in a press release. The commander of the U.S. Forces Korea also heads the CFC and the United Nations Command in Korea.
"It is his desire," the statement added, "(to) transform all assigned U.S. forces to three-year family-accompanied tours for U.S. servicemembers, instead of the one-year family-unaccompanied tours which currently characterize U.S. Forces Korea stationing."Â [Yonhap News]
General Bell has been pushing this issue all last year and seems determined to continue it this year as well. Though I think three year accompanied tours would be a great idea the infrastructure to support it is not available right now. Would you want a soldier living in the Dongducheon ville with his family for three years especially if they have kids? The hustler landlords would have a field day. Additionally there are no schools on post and the PX and commissary could not support that type of increase in people. Plus you have to take into consideration the force protection of all these people living off post.   I just don’t see this happening anytime soon, but three year tours after the Camp Humphreys expansion should definitely become the norm.
Here is some more interesting information from the Yonhap article:
The remarks came as a response to an earlier report by Seoul’s Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper that the United States plans to transform its frontline 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea into a rotating unit, which will enable Washington to quickly redeploy the unit to outside of Korea when there are conflicts in other areas.
"To suggest that the 2nd Infantry Division will become a rotating unit is a complete fabrication," Gen. Bell was quoted by the CFC spokesman as saying.
The Korean media fabricating stuff about USFK, say it ain’t so.Â
4:36 am on January 11th, 2008 1
I don’t know what part of USFK it was, but I definately remember reading a couple years ago about a plan in the works to stop the individual rotations and move to 6 month full rotations.
I might try to track down a quote on that in the Stars and Stripes. I seem to remember it coming around 2005….
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2:36 am on January 12th, 2008 2
I tried for about 15 mintues to find a reference but couldn’t. It wasn’t in the Stars and Stripes, so it must have been in the Korean press —- which of course opens up the possibility that it was a false quote as the current leadership claims here….
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7:06 am on January 12th, 2008 3
I remember the official date to close Yongsan was 2008 and no one USFK official would change this date, even when all the evidence clearly indicated this could not happen, until the Korean press started reporting a delay. Just a couple of years ago USFK had everyone under a 9PM curfew for force protection reasons. Now the official position is to try and make Korea a three year command sponsored tour for all. Boy am I confused?
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3:21 pm on January 12th, 2008 4
Pe4te,
You’re not the only one that’s confused. On one hand, USFK is still claiming that North Korea is a viable threat and on the other, they’re saying, “let’s bring in even more dependents.” I think it’s time to stop with the charade and just admit that we’re here to maintain a footprint in this part of the world.
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3:22 pm on January 12th, 2008 5
Oops, I meant “Pete.”
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5:23 pm on January 12th, 2008 6
That is all fine and dandy if it happens. But, if it does happen, the US needs to seriously consider some type of price controls on Korean substandard housing. These price gougers are outside every camp and charge outrageous prices.
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6:31 pm on January 12th, 2008 7
When I lived off post in Uijongbu I lived in an apartment away from the camp just to get away from the sharks outside the camp. I had to jog to work every morning but at least I lived in a great apartment at an affordable price instead of the crap usually found in the villes at inflated prices.
Hopefully most of the housing will be on post to avoid this problem.
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